Calotype view of workers standing on a cast iron lighthouse assembled temporarily at the foundry where it was created in Philadelphia before its shipment for installation on Carysfort Reef in Florida, August 2, 1849. By the Langenheim brothers.

Union General John C. Caldwell and his staff posing in front of a tent on the Antietam battlefield shortly after the battle there, September 1862. By Alexander Gardner. Animated stereoscopic photographs.

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Two portraits of Union soldier Morgan L. Snyder who suffered a gunshot wound to his right eye while serving with Company I of the 91st New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. Attributed to Dr. Reed Bontecou at Harewood Hospital in Washington, D.C. Animated stereoview.

Two views of men posing with the wreckage of a steam locomotive named
Charles Minot which was derailed during an attack by Confederate
cavalry in Virginia, 1862. The men, probably railroad engineers, appear
to be trying to salvage the locomotive. According to Miller's Photographic History of the Civil War, this was a train derailed by Confederate cavalry near Manassas Junction in 1862. By Andrew J. Russell.

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Two photographs said to show the three Union officers planning the capture of
John Wilkes Booth, c. 1865. Probably made after Booth’s death in Virginia 12
days after his assassination of President Abraham Lincoln as a
simplified recreation of the effort involved in capturing Booth. Union
intelligence chief Colonel Lafayette Baker is sitting at center,
Lieutenant Everton Conger is on the right, and Lieutenant Luther Baker is on the left. By Alexander Gardner.

Daguerreotype portrait of Dr. Jonathan Letterman at the bedside of a dead or dying patient, 1849. He later became a major in the Union Army during the Civil War where he became known as the "Father of Modern Battlefield Medicine." The hospital named Camp Letterman set up after the Battle of Gettysburg was named after him. Image from the American Experience documentary called Death and the Civil War.

Adolf Hitler (far right) while working as an intelligence agent for the Reichswehr photographed here attending the funeral for Kurt Eisner, the assassinated Minister-President of Bavaria, February 26, 1919.

Three men posing with two mortars in the Trapier Mortar Battery on Morris Island shortly after the surrender of the nearby Fort Sumter by Union forces in Charleston Harbor, 1861. The battery fired its mortars at Fort Sumter in the bombardment leading to its surrender. The darkroom used by the photographers to develop this photograph is visible behind the mortar in the background. By Osborn and Durbec. From The Blue and Gray in Black and White: A History of Civil War Photography.

Dead Confederate soldiers in the Bloody Lane with Union soldiers, probably part of a burial detail, posing behind them after the Battle of Antietam, 1862. By Alexander Gardner. Animated stereoscopic photographs.

View taken during the dedication ceremony for the "Naatje of the Dam" war monument (visible in the foreground) in Dam Square in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, August 27, 1856. By Pieter Oosterhuis. Animated stereoscopic photographs.

Two daguerreotype views of the General Post Office in Washington, D.C., c. 1846. Probably taken in different seasons judging from the difference in the amount of leaves in the trees. By John Plumbe, Jr. The building survives today as the Hotel Monaco.